Re: Establish Direction

Rodd Ahrenstorff had the idea of creating a central IT committee.

I'm not sure if I think this would fit too well into the scope of a LoCo, but perhaps as a LoCo we can create a committee as such to govern the state. Not officially of course, just another team or users.

Of course, after we establish a scope, this may fit nicely into it. Perhaps considering the IT guys as just other Linux users that we want to support as a whole.

The only reason I can see to keep this separate is that it may not be Ubuntu directly. Considering the population density of our state, this may be something we could overlook.

Re: Establish Direction

I hope this doesn't sound selfish, it's not mean to be...

I need to clarify a bit. I don't think we need another committee per se, but I would like to at least know if any LoCo members are system administrators with parallel interests. Unfortunately, LoCo members do not have a method to list their interests on the LoCo pages...that I'm aware of.

We know what the LoCo want's to promote; Ubuntu. But a LoCo is nothing without members and I feel the LoCo (just as any LUG) must address the expectations of it's members. The retention of members within any interest group depends on this objective.

Ubuntu is obviously used on servers (Cononical just did a world-wide survey) as well as desktops. Promoting both use cases within a LoCo benefits Ubuntu.

For example, if every single member of a LoCo is using Ubuntu at home on their desktop, my interest in the group would be pretty limited. However, if other sys admins are members then I have an audience to share information with and garner new knowledge from, related directly to Ubuntu and Linux in general. The same applies to desktop-only users.

We are too small to start special interest groups, but knowing the interests of other members within the LoCo would help every prospective member gage their interest in joining the group.

I work as the Senior IT Systems Administrator for a non-profit mental health company with 170 employees in 5 locations covering Western SD. We use Windows Server 2003/2008, Windows XP Pro, AD, Citrix, Lotus Note/Domino, Red Hat & Ubuntu Linux servers, OCS, thin-clients, HP & Dell hardware, HP & Dell laptops, HP printers, blah blah....
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This is the life I lead as a system administrator...it is what it is

Does that make sense? Would it be possible to add an "Interests" descriptor for LoCo members and maybe provide an inclusive desription of the overall members interests on the LoCo site?

Re: Establish Direction

I love that idea. I too am an administrator. I deal with Ubuntu exclusively, but am not limited to just this.

I work with postfix, MySQL, Courier, ClamAV, Drupal, Zimbra, etc. I'm not highly specialized in any specific location. My areas of focus tend to be on network security, system networking, user networking, Drupal development.

I'm one of the owners of the Ubuntu Drupal team as well. You and I will share interests undoubtedly.

On the other hand, in a state of less than 10 people per square mile, we can't scope to just advanced users. I would love to focus on a line of taking general users and turning them into advanced users that can do whatever they want. After all, the beauty of Linux IS being able to do what you want. If we can build a focus starting with building a user base of people that are interested in getting away from Windows, we could craft their imaginations into a fashion similar to ours. With that, perhaps a nice "goal." "We aim to expand a users knowledge and imagination."

I would enjoy being able to focus on some of the finer details to systems management as well. Personally, I'm in the process of moving some of my hosted websites to an entirely different provider. I've decided that it's just much more stable to host websites at 1and1 since they can manage a Drupal Multisite setup rather than hosting them in an environment that isn't so reliable.